


Time Passing in Time

by alexcat



Category: Babylon 5 & Related Fandoms
Genre: Ficlet, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-06
Updated: 2017-03-06
Packaged: 2018-09-29 22:42:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10146245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexcat/pseuds/alexcat
Summary: Time stops for no one.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For the Babylon 5 Love Month

Marcus didn’t know he was in a stasis. Even though everyone thought that he was simply frozen until such time as he could be cured and awakened, that wasn’t the real truth. 

He wandered. 

Through time and space. 

Or his mind thought he did. 

He was amazed at spending so much time on a planet he’d never actually seen. He’d awoken one morning to the sound of chickens outside his window and spent some months on a tiny farm in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in what was then the United States. He was apparently Cousin Marcus from the old country, who’d come to visit and help his widowed cousin do chores. Not even Ranger training had prepared him for chopping wood, cutting hay with a sling blade and shoeing a reluctant mule. 

His ‘cousin’ was kind to him, though. She never told him he was crazy once as he explained that he was not her cousin but, in fact, a visitor from the distant future. She smiled kindly and told him she understood. She even threatened to shoot a neighbor who suggested they had a more intimate nature than being cousins. 

One day, he found himself telling her he must go and going to the nearest train…

Having no memory of the journey, he awakened on Earth at another time and in another place. 

This went on for a long time. He moved from one place and time to another. He figured he must be very old by now, but when he looked at himself in the mirror, he looked the same as he always had. 

One day he woke in what appeared to be a hospital. The man sitting by the bed looked an awful lot like Stephen, though he was perhaps more than twenty years Stephen’s senior. 

“Welcome back,” the man said. He sounded like Stephen, too. 

Marcus tried to talk but his voice was little more than a croak, as if his throat had rusted. 

“No, don’t say anything right now. You’ll need a little time to get your bearings and for all your functions to come back.” 

Marcus tried to speak again but the man shushed him. 

“You’ve been asleep for a very long time, my friend. Do you remember the machine on Babylon 5?”

Of course he did! He’d die—died to save Susan. He tried to say her name.

“Susan is fine. She is on Minbar now, Ranger One since Delenn retired.’

The man smiled at him and he realized that he _was_ Stephen Franklin. 

“Just rest and I’ll tell you all the things that have happened in the last twenty-five years. You’ve been asleep for all this time. We have a lot to catch up on.” 

Boy, did they!


End file.
